Mars (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Mars ( , ) was the god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome.Mary Beard, J.A. North, and S.R.F. Price, Religions of Rome: A History (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 47–48. He was second in importance only to Jupiter and he was the most prominent of the military gods in the religion of the Roman army. Most of his festivals were held in March, the month named for him ([[Martius (month)|Latin Martius]]), and in October, which began the season for military campaigning and ended the season for farming. Under the influence of Greek culture, Mars was identified with the Greek god Ares,Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia, The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215. whose myths were reinterpreted in Roman literature and art under the name of Mars. But the character and dignity of Mars differed in fundamental ways from that of his Greek counterpart, who is often treated with contempt and revulsion in Greek literature.Kurt A. Raaflaub, War and Peace in the Ancient World (Blackwell, 2007), p. 15. Mars was a part of the Archaic Triad along with Jupiter and Quirinus, the latter of whom, as a guardian of the Roman people, had no Greek equivalent. Mars' altar in the Campus Martius, the area of Rome that took its name from him, was supposed to have been dedicated by Numa, the peace-loving semi-legendary second king of Rome. Although the center of Mars' worship was originally located outside the sacred boundary of Rome (pomerium), Augustus made the god a renewed focus of Roman religion by establishing the Temple of Mars Ultor in his new forum.Paul Rehak and John G. Younger, Imperium and Cosmos: Augustus and the Northern Campus Martius (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), pp. 11–12. Although Ares was viewed primarily as a destructive and destabilizing force, Mars represented military power as a way to secure peace, and was a father (pater) of the Roman people.Isidore of Seville calls Mars Romanae gentis auctorem, the originator or founder of the Roman people as a gens (Etymologiae 5.33.5). In the mythic genealogy and founding myths of Rome, Mars was the father of Romulus and Remus with Rhea Silvia. His love affair with Venus symbolically reconciled the two different traditions of Rome's founding; Venus was the divine mother of the hero Aeneas, celebrated as the Trojan refugee who "founded" Rome several generations before Romulus laid out the city walls. The importance of Mars in establishing religious and cultural identity within the Roman Empire is indicated by the vast number of inscriptions identifying him with a local deity, particularly in the Western provinces. Mars may ultimately be a reflex of the Proto-Indo-European god Perkwunos, having originally a thunderer character.York, Michael. Romulus and Remus, Mars and Quirinus. Journal of Indo-European Studies 16:1 & 2 (Spring/Summer, 1988), 153-172. At least etymological Etruscan predecessors are present in Maris,Pallotino, pp. 29, 30; Hendrik Wagenvoort, "The Origin of the Ludi Saeculares," in Studies in Roman Literature, Culture and Religion (Brill, 1956), p. 219 et passim; John F. Hall III, "The Saeculum Novum of Augustus and its Etruscan Antecedents," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16.3 (1986), p. 2574. though this is not universally agreed upon. Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies (Wayne State University Press, 1986), p. 226. Birth Like Ares who was the son of Zeus and Hera,Hesiod, Theogony p. 79 in the translation of Norman O. Brown (Bobbs-Merrill, 1953); 921 in the Loeb Classical Library numbering; Iliad, 5.890–896. Mars is usually considered to be the son of Jupiter and Juno. However, in a version of his birth given by Ovid, he was the son of Juno alone. Jupiter had usurped the mother's function when he gave birth to Minerva directly from his forehead (or mind); to restore the balance, Juno sought the advice of the goddess Flora on how to do the same. Flora obtained a magic flower (Latin flos, plural flores, a masculine word) and tested it on a heifer who became fecund at once. She then plucked a flower ritually using her thumb, touched Juno's belly, and impregnated her. Juno withdrew to Thrace and the shore of Marmara for the birth.Ovid, Fasti 5.229–260 Ovid tells this story in the Fasti, his long-form poetic work on the Roman calendar. It may explain why the Matronalia, a festival celebrated by married women in honor of Juno as a goddess of childbirth, occurred on the first day of Mars' month, which is also marked on a calendar from late antiquity as the birthday of Mars. In the earliest Roman calendar, March was the first month, and the god would have been born with the new year.William Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, 1908), p. 35f., discusses this interpretation in order to question it. Ovid is the only source for the story. He may be presenting a literary myth of his own invention, or an otherwise unknown archaic Italic tradition; either way, in choosing to include the story, he emphasizes that Mars was connected to plant life and was not alienated from female nurture.Carole E. Newlands, Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 105–106. Consort The consort of Mars was Nerio or Neriene, "Valor." She represents the vital force (vis), power (potentia) and majesty (maiestas) of Mars.Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 13.23. Gellius says the word Nerio or Nerienes is Sabine and is supposed to be the origin of the name Nero as used by the Claudian family, who were Sabine in origin. The Sabines themselves, Gellius says, thought the word was Greek in origin, from νεῦρα (neura), Latin nervi, meaning the sinews and ligaments of the limbs. Her name was regarded as Sabine in origin and is equivalent to Latin virtus, "manly virtue" (from vir, "man").Robert E.A. Palmer, The Archaic Community of the Romans (Cambridge University Press, 1970, 2009), p. 167. In the early 3rd century BC, the comic playwright Plautus has a reference to Mars greeting Nerio, his wife.Plautus, Truculentus 515. A source from late antiquity says that Mars and Neriene were celebrated together at a festival held on March 23.Johannes Lydus, De mensibus 4.60 (42). In the later Roman Empire, Neriene came to be identified with Minerva.Porphyrion, Commentum in Horatium Flaccum, on Epistula II.2.209. Nerio probably originates as a divine personification of Mars' power, as such abstractions in Latin are generally feminine. Her name appears with that of Mars in an archaic prayer invoking a series of abstract qualities, each paired with the name of a deity. The influence of Greek mythology and its anthropomorphic gods may have caused Roman writers to treat these pairs as "marriages."William Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1922), p. 150–154; Roger D. Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult (University of Illinois Press, 2006), pp. 113–114; Gary Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press, 2005), p. 145. The prayer is recorded in the passage on Nerio in Aulus Gellius. Venus and Mars takes its name]] The union of Venus and Mars held greater appeal for poets and philosophers, and the couple were a frequent subject of art. In Greek myth, the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite had been exposed to ridicule when her husband Hephaestus (whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan) caught them in the act by means of a magical snare. Although not originally part of the Roman tradition, in 217 BC Venus and Mars were presented as a complementary pair in the lectisternium, a public banquet at which images of twelve major gods of the Roman state were presented on couches as if present and participating.Robert Schilling, "Venus," in Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 147. Scenes of Venus and Mars in Roman art often ignore the adulterous implications of their union, and take pleasure in the good-looking couple attended by Cupid or multiple Loves (amores). Some scenes may imply marriage,John R. Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C.–A.D. 250: Ritual, Space, and Decoration (University of California Press, 1991), pp. 156–157 and the relationship was romanticized in funerary or domestic art in which husbands and wives had themselves portrayed as the passionate divine couple.Laura Salah Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church amid the Spaces of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 284–287. The uniting of deities representing Love and War lent itself to allegory, especially since the lovers were the parents of Concordia. The Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino notes that "only Venus dominates Mars, and he never dominates her".Ficino, On Love, speech 5, chapter 8, as summarized in the entry on "Mars," The Classical Tradition (Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 564. In ancient Roman and Renaissance art, Mars is often shown disarmed and relaxed, or even sleeping, but the extramarital nature of their affair can also suggest that this peace is impermanent.Entry on "Mars" in The Classical Tradition, p. 564. Essential nature on a black-slip bowl from Campania, Italy, 250-150 BC, British Museum]] Virility as a kind of life force (vis) or virtue (virtus) is an essential characteristic of Mars.R.B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate (Cambridge University Press, 1951), pp. 470–471. Onians connects the name of Mars to the Latin mas, maris, "male" (p. 178), as had Isidore of Seville, saying that the month of March (Martius) was named after Mars "because at that time all living things are stirred toward virility (mas, gen. maris) and to the pleasures of sexual intercourse" (eo tempore cuncta animantia agantur ad marem et ad concumbendi voluptatem): Etymologies 5.33.5, translation by Stephen A. Barney, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 128. In antiquity, vis was thought to be related etymologically to vita, "life." Varro (De lingua latina 5.64, quoting Lucilius) notes that vis is vita: "vis drives us to do everything." As an agricultural guardian, he directs his energies toward creating conditions that allow crops to grow, which may include warding off hostile forces of nature.On the relation of Mars' warrior aspect to his agricultural functions with respect to Dumézil's Trifunctional hypothesis, see Wouter W. Belier, Decayed Gods: Origin and Development of Georges Dumézil's 'idéologie tripartie' '' (Brill, 1991), pp. 88–91 online. As an embodiment of masculine aggression, he is the force that drives wars – but ideally, war that delivers a secure peace. The priesthood of the Arval Brothers called on Mars to drive off "rust" ''(lues), with its double meaning of wheat fungus and the red oxides that affect metal, a threat to both iron farm implements and weaponry. In the surviving text of their hymn, the Arval Brothers invoked Mars as ferus, "savage" or "feral" like a wild animal.Schilling, "Mars," in Roman and European Mythologies, p. 135; Palmer, Archaic Community, pp. 113–114. Mars' potential for savagery is expressed in his obscure connections to the wild woodlands, and he may even have originated as a god of the wild, beyond the boundaries set by humans, and thus a force to be propitiated.Gary Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome (University of California Press, 2005), p. 127; Fowler, Religious Experience, p. 134. In his book on farming, Cato invokes Mars Silvanus for a ritual to be carried out in silva, in the woods, an uncultivated place that if not held within bounds can threaten to overtake the fields needed for crops.Cato, On Agriculture 141. In pre-modern agricultural societies, encroaching woodland or wild growth was a real threat to the food supply, since clearing land for cultivation required intense manual labor with minimal tools and little or no large-scale machinery. Fowler says of Mars, "As he was not localised either on the farm or in the city, I prefer to think that he was originally conceived as a Power outside the boundary in each case, but for that very reason all the more to be propitiated by the settlers within it" (Religious Experience, p. 142). Mars' character as an agricultural god may derive solely from his role as a defender and protector,Schilling, "Mars," p. 135. or may be inseparable from his warrior nature,Beard et al., Religions of Rome: A History, pp. 47–48. as the leaping of his armed priests the Salii was meant to quicken the growth of crops.Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome, p. 127 It appears that Mars was originally a thunderer or storm deity, which explains some of his mixed traits in regards to fertility.York, Michael. Romulus and Remus, Mars and Quirinus. Journal of Indo-European Studies 16:1 & 2 (Spring/Summer, 1988), 153-172. This role was later taken in the Roman pantheon by several other gods, such as Summanus or Jupiter. Sacred animals and twins Romulus and Remus from an altar to Venus and Mars]] The wild animals most sacred to Mars were the woodpecker, the wolf, and the bear, which in the natural lore of the Romans were said always to inhabit the same foothills and woodlands.Plutarch, Roman Questions 21, citing Nigidius Figulus. Plutarch notes that the woodpecker (picus) is sacred to Mars because "it is a courageous and spirited bird and has a beak so strong that it can overturn oaks by pecking them until it has reached the inmost part of the tree."Plutarch, Roman Questions 21; also named as sacred to Mars in his Life of Romulus. Ovid (Fasti 3.37) calls the woodpecker the bird of Mars. As the beak of the picus Martius contained the god's power to ward off harm, it was carried as a magic charm to prevent bee stings and leech bites.Pliny, Natural History 29.29. The bird of Mars also guarded a woodland herb (paeonia) used for treatment of the digestive or female reproductive systems; those who sought to harvest it were advised to do so by night, lest the woodpecker jab out their eyes.Pliny, Natural History 27.60. Pliny names the herb as glycysīdē in Greek, Latin paeonia (see Peony: Name), also called pentorobos. The picus Martius seems to have been a particular species, but authorities differ on which one: perhaps Picus viridis''A.H. Krappe, "Picus Who Is Also Zeus," ''Mnemosyne 9.4 (1941), p. 241. or Dryocopus martius.William Geoffrey Arnott, Birds in the ancient world from A to Z (Routledge, 2007), p. 63 online. The woodpecker was revered by the Latin peoples, who abstained from eating its flesh.Plutarch, Roman Questions 21. Athenaeus lists the woodpecker among delicacies on Greek tables (Deipnosophistae 9.369). It was one of the most important birds in Roman and Italic augury, the practice of reading the will of the gods through watching the sky for signs.Plautus, Asinaria 259–261; Pliny, Natural History 10.18. Named also in the Iguvine Tables (6a, 1–7), as Umbrian peiqu; Schilling, "Roman Divination," in Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 96–97 and 105, note 7. The mythological figure named Picus had powers of augury that he retained when he was transformed into a woodpecker; in one tradition, Picus was the son of Mars.Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.31; Peter F. Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus: A Study in Roman Folk Religion (Brill, 1992), p. 33. The Umbrian cognate peiqu also means "woodpecker," and the Italic Picenes were supposed to have derived their name from the picus who served as their guide animal during a ritual migration (ver sacrum) undertaken as a rite of Mars.John Greppin, entry on "woodpecker," Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997), p. 648. In the territory of the Aequi, another Italic people, Mars had an oracle of great antiquity where the prophecies were supposed to be spoken by a woodpecker perched on a wooden column.Dionysius Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities I.14.5, as noted by Mary Emma Armstrong, The Significance of Certain Colors in Roman Ritual (George Banta Publishing, 1917), p. 6. Mars' association with the wolf is familiar from what may be the most famous of Roman myths, the story of how a she-wolf (lupa) suckled his infant sons when they were exposed by order of King Amulius, who feared them because he had usurped the throne from their grandfather, Numitor.The myth of the she-wolf, and the birth of the twins with Mars as their father, is a long and complex tradition that weaves together multiple stories about the founding of Rome. See T.P. Wiseman, Remus: A Roman Myth (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. xiii, 73ff. et passim. The woodpecker also brought nourishment to the twins.Plutarch, Life of Romulus 4. The wolf appears elsewhere in Roman art and literature in masculine form as the animal of Mars. A statue group that stood along the Appian Way showed Mars in the company of wolves.Livy 22.1.12, as cited by Wiseman, Remus, p. 189, note 6, and Armstrong, The Significance of Certain Colors, p. 6. At the Battle of Sentinum in 295 BC, the appearance of the wolf of Mars (Martius lupus) was a sign that Roman victory was to come.Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 10.27. In Roman Gaul, the goose was associated with the Celtic forms of Mars, and archaeologists have found geese buried alongside warriors in graves. The goose was considered a bellicose animal because it is easily provoked to aggression.Miranda Green, Animals in Celtic Life and Myth (Routledge, 1992), p. 126. Sacrificial animals , a sacrifice of a pig, ram, and bull, led by a priest with his head ritually covered]] Ancient Greek and Roman religion distinguished between animals that were sacred to a deity and those that were prescribed as the correct sacrificial offerings for the god. Wild animals might be viewed as already belonging to the god to whom they were sacred, or at least not owned by human beings and therefore not theirs to give. Since sacrificial meat was eaten at a banquet after the gods received their portion – mainly the entrails ''(exta) – it follows that the animals sacrificed were most often, though not always, domestic animals normally part of the Roman diet.Nicole Belayche, "Religious Actors in Daily Life: Practices and Related Beliefs," in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 283; C. Bennett Pascal, "October Horse," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981), pp. 268, 277. Gods often received castrated male animals as sacrifices, and the goddesses female victims; Mars, however, regularly received intact males.As did Neptune, Janus and the Genius; John Scheid, "Sacrifices for Gods and Ancestors," in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 264. Mars did receive oxen under a few of his cult titles, such as Mars Grabovius, but the usual offering was the bull, singly, in multiples, or in combination with other animals. The two most distinctive animal sacrifices made to Mars were the suovetaurilia, a triple offering of a pig (sus), ram (ovis) and bull (taurus),Mary Beard, J.A. North, and S.R.F. Price, Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 153. and the October Horse, the only horse sacrifice known to have been carried out in ancient Rome and a rare instance of a victim the Romans considered inedible.C. Bennett Pascal, "October Horse," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981), pp. 263, 268, 277. Temples and topography in Rome The earliest center in Rome for cultivating Mars as a deity was the Altar of Mars (Ara Martis) in the Campus Martius ("Field of Mars") outside the sacred boundary of Rome (pomerium). The Romans thought that this altar had been established by the semi-legendary Numa Pompilius, the peace-loving successor of Romulus.Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 245. According to Roman tradition, the Campus Martius had been consecrated to Mars by their ancestors to serve as horse pasturage and an equestrian training ground for youths.Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 5.13.2 During the Roman Republic (509–27 BC), the Campus was a largely open expanse. No temple was built at the altar, but from 193 BC a covered walkway connected it to the Porta Fontinalis, near the office and archives of the Roman censors. Newly elected censors placed their curule chairs by the altar, and when they had finished conducting the census, the citizens were collectively purified with a suovetaurilia there.Livy 40.45.8, 1.44.1–2. A frieze from the so-called "Altar" of Domitius Ahenobarbus is thought to depict the census, and may show Mars himself standing by the altar as the procession of victims advances.Katja Moede, "Reliefs, Public and Private," in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 170. in the Forum of Augustus, Rome]] The main Temple of Mars (Aedes Martis) in the Republican period also lay outside the sacred boundary and was devoted to the god's warrior aspect.Vitruvius 1.7.1; Servius, note to Aeneid 1.292; Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, p. 244. It was built to fulfill a vow (votum) made by a Titus Quinctius in 388 BC during the Gallic siege of Rome.Livy 6.5.7; Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, p. 244. The founding day (dies natalis) was commemorated on June 1,Ovid, Fasti 6.191–192 and the Fasti Antiates (Degrassi 463), as cited by Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, p. 244. and the temple is attested by several inscriptions and literary sources.CIL 6.473, 474 = 30774, 485; ILS 3139, 3144, as cited by Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, p. 244. The sculpture group of Mars and the wolves was displayed there.H.H. Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 127. Soldiers sometimes assembled at the temple before heading off to war, and it was the point of departure for a major parade of Roman cavalry held annually on July 15.Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies, pp. 127, 164. A temple to Mars in the Circus Flaminius was built around 133 BC, funded by Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus from war booty. It housed a colossal statue of Mars and a nude Venus.Pliny, Natural History 36.26; Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, p. 245. The Campus Martius continued to provide venues for equestrian events such as chariot racing during the Imperial period, but under the first emperor Augustus it underwent a major program of urban renewal, marked by monumental architecture. The Altar of Augustan Peace (Ara Pacis Augustae) was located there, as was the Obelisk of Montecitorio, imported from Egypt to form the pointer (gnomon) of the Solarium Augusti, a giant sundial. With its public gardens, the Campus became one of the most attractive places in the city to visit.Paul Rehak, Imperium and Cosmos: Augustus and the Northern Campus Martius (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), pp. 7–8. Augustus chose the Campus Martius as the site of his new Temple to Mars Ultor , a manifestation of Mars he cultivated as the avenger (ultor) of the murder of Julius Caesar and of the military disaster suffered at the Battle of Carrhae. When the legionary standards lost to the Parthians were recovered, they were housed in the new temple. The date of the temple's dedication on May 12 was aligned with the heliacal setting of the constellation Scorpio, the sign of war.Rehak, Imperium and Cosmos, p. 145. The date continued to be marked with circus games as late as the mid-4th century AD.Michele Renee Salzman, On Roman Time: The Codex Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 1990), p. 122. A large statue of Mars was part of the short-lived Arch of Nero, which was built in 62 AD but dismantled after Nero's suicide and disgrace (damnatio memoriae).Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, p. 27. Iconography and Symbol In Roman art, Mars is depicted as either bearded and mature, or young and clean-shaven. Even nude or seminude, he often wears a helmet or carries a spear as emblems of his warrior nature. Mars was among the deities to appear on the earliest Roman coinage in the late 4th and early 3rd century BC.Jonathan Williams, "Religion and Roman Coins," in A Companion to Roman Religion, p. 143. On the Altar of Peace (Ara Pacis), built in the last years of the 1st century BC, Mars is a mature man with a "handsome, classicizing" face, and a short curly beard and moustache. His helmet is a plumed neo-Attic-type. He wears a military cloak (paludamentum) and a cuirass ornamented with a gorgoneion. Although the relief is somewhat damaged at this spot, he appears to hold a spear garlanded in laurel, symbolizing a peace that is won by military victory. The 1st-century statue of Mars found in the Forum of Nerva (pictured at top) is similar. In this guise, Mars is presented as the dignified ancestor of the Roman people. The panel of the Ara Pacis on which he appears would have faced the Campus Martius, reminding viewers that Mars was the god whose altar Numa established there, that is, the god of Rome's oldest civic and military institutions.Paul Rehak and John G. Younger, Imperium and Cosmos: Augustus and the Northern Campus Martius (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p. 114. Particularly in works of art influenced by the Greek tradition, Mars may be portrayed in a manner that resembles Ares, youthful, beardless, and often nude.Rehak and Younger, Imperium and Cosmos, p. 114. In the Renaissance, Mars' nudity was thought to represent his lack of fear in facing danger.Entry on "Mars", in The Classical Tradition, p. 564, citing Sebastiano Erizzo, On Ancient Medallions (1559), p. 120. The spear of Mars The spear is the instrument of Mars in the same way that Jupiter wields the lightning bolt, Neptune the trident, and Saturn the scythe or sickle.Martianus Capella 5.425, with Mars specified as Gradivus and Neptune named as Portunus. A relic or fetish called the spear of MarsVarro, Antiquitates frg. 254* (Cardauns); Plutarch, Romulus 29.1 (a rather muddled account); Arnobius, Adversus nationes 6.11. was kept in a sacrarium at the Regia, the former residence of the Kings of Rome.Michael Lipka, Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach (Brill, 2009), p. 88. The spear was said to move, tremble or vibrate at impending war or other danger to the state, as was reported to occur before the assassination of Julius Caesar.Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 4.6.1; Cassius Dio 44.17.2 (because Caesar was pontifex maximus); Veit Rosenberger, "Republican Nobiles: Controlling the Res Publica," in A Companion to Roman Religion, p. 295. When Mars is pictured as a peace-bringer, his spear is wreathed with laurel or other vegetation, as on the Ara Pacis or a coin of Aemilianus.Imperium and Cosmos p. 114. Priesthoods The high priest of Mars in Roman public religion was the Flamen Martialis, who was one of the three major priests in the fifteen-member college of flamens. Mars was also served by the Salii, a twelve-member priesthood of patrician youths who dressed as archaic warriors and danced in procession around the city in March. Both priesthoods extend to the earliest periods of Roman history, and patrician birth was required.Christopher Smith, "The Religion of Archaic Rome," in A Companion to Roman Religion, p. 39. Festivals and rituals The festivals of Mars cluster in his namesake month of March (Latin: Martius), with a few observances in October, the beginning and end of the season for military campaigning and agriculture. Festivals with horse racing took place in the Campus Martius. Some festivals in March retained characteristics of new year festivals, since Martius was originally the first month of the Roman calendar. , issued 88 BC, depicting the helmeted head of Mars, with Victory driving a two-horse chariot (biga) on the reverse]] * February 27: Equirria, involving chariot or horse races; * March 1: Mars' dies natalis ("birthday"), a feria also sacred to his mother Juno;Marked as such only on the Chronography of 354. * March 14: a second Equirria, again with chariot races; * March 14 or 15: Mamuralia, a new year festival when a figure called Mamurius Veturius (perhaps the "old Mars" of the old year) is driven out; * March 17: an [[Agonalia#Agonium Martiale|Agonalia or Agonium Martiale]], an obscure type of observance held at other times for various deities; * March 23: Tubilustrium, a purification of the deploying army March 23; * October 15: the ritual of the October Horse, with a chariot race and Rome's only known horse sacrifice; * October 19: Armilustrium ("purification of arms"). Mars was also honored by chariot races at the Robigalia and Consualia, though these festivals are not primarily dedicated to him. From 217 BC onward, Mars was among the gods honored at the lectisternium, a banquet given for deities who were present as images. Roman hymns (carmina) are rarely preserved, but Mars is invoked in two. The Arval Brothers, or "Brothers of the Fields," chanted a hymn to Mars while performing their three-step dance.The hymn is preserved in an inscription (CIL 6.2104); Frances Hickson Hahn, "Performing the Sacred," in A Companion to Roman Religion, p. 237. The Carmen Saliare was sung by Mars' priests the Salii while they moved twelve sacred shields (ancilia) throughout the city in a procession.Hahn, "Performing the Sacred," p. 237, citing Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2.70.1–5. In the 1st century AD, Quintilian remarks that the language of the Salian hymn was so archaic that it was no longer fully understood.Quintilian, Institutiones 1.6.40, as cited by Frances Hickson Hahn, in "Performing the Sacred," in A Companion to Roman Religion, p. 236. Name and cult epithets , an Etruscan bronze of the early 4th century BC, probably depicting a warriorGuiliano Bonfante and Larissa Bonfante, ''The Etruscan Language: An Introduction (Manchester University Press, 1983, 2002 rev.ed.), p. 26; Donald Strong and J.M.C. Toynbee, Roman Art (Yale University Press, 1976, 1988), p. 33; Fred S. Kleiner, introduction to A History of Roman Art (Wadsworth, 2007, 2010 "enhanced edition"), p. xl.]] The word Mārs (genitive Mārtis),The classical Latin declension of the name is as follows: nominative and vocative case, Mars; genitive, Martis; accusative, Martem; dative, Marti; ablative Marte.http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/latin/tchmat/grammar/whprax/w7-d3-n.html which in Old Latin and poetic usage also appears as Māvors (Māvortis),Virgil, Aeneid VIII, 630 is cognate with Oscan Māmers (Māmertos). ; some of the older literature assumes an Indo-European form closer to *''Marts'', and see a connection with the Indic wind gods, the Maruts However, this makes the appearance of Mavors and the agricultural cults of Mars difficult to explain. The Old Latin form was believed to derive from an Italic *Māworts, but can also be explained as deriving from Maris, the name of an Etruscan child-god;Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Brill, 2008, p. 366. scholars have varying views on whether the two gods are related, and if so how.Massimo Pallottino, "Religion in Pre-Roman Italy," in Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), pp. 29, 30; Hendrik Wagenvoort, "The Origin of the Ludi Saeculares," in Studies in Roman Literature, Culture and Religion (Brill, 1956), p. 219 et passim; John F. Hall III, "The Saeculum Novum of Augustus and its Etruscan Antecedents," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16.3 (1986), p. 2574; Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies (Wayne State University Press, 1986), p. 226. Latin adjectives from the name of Mars are martius and martialis, from which derive English "martial" (as in "martial arts" or "martial law") and personal names such as "Martin". Mars also gave his name to the third month in the Roman calendar, Martius, from which English "March" derives. In the most ancient Roman calendar, Martius was the first month. The planet Mars was named for him, and in some allegorical and philosophical writings, the planet and the god are endowed with shared characteristics."Mars," The Classical Tradition, p. 565. In many languages, Tuesday is named for the planet Mars or the god of war: In Latin, martis dies ("Mars's Day"), survived in Romance languages as martes (Spanish), mardi (French), martedi (Italian), marţi (Romanian), and dimarts (Catalan). In Irish (Gaelic), the day is An Mháirt, while in Albanian it is e Marta. The English word Tuesday derives from Old English "Tiwesdæg" and means "Tiw's Day", Tiw being the Old English form of the Proto-Germanic war god *Tîwaz, or Týr in Norse.Online Etymology Dictionary. In Roman religion In Classical Roman religion, Mars was invoked under several titles, and the first Roman emperor Augustus thoroughly integrated Mars into Imperial cult. The 4th-century Latin historian Ammianus Marcellinus treats Mars as one of several classical Roman deities who remained "cultic realities" up to his own time.R.L. Rike, Apex Omnium: Religion in the ''Res Gestae of Ammianus'' (University of California Press, 1987), p. 26. Mars, and specifically Mars Ultor, was among the gods who received sacrifices from Julian, the only emperor to reject Christianity after the conversion of Constantine I. In 363 AD, in preparation for the Siege of Ctesiphon, Julian sacrificed ten "very fine" bulls to Mars Ultor. The tenth bull violated ritual protocol by attempting to break free, and when killed and examined, produced ill omens, among the many that were read at the end of Julian's reign. As represented by Ammianus, Julian swore never to make sacrifice to Mars again—a vow kept with his death a month later.Ammianus Marcellinus 24.6.17; Rike, Apex Omnium, p. 32. Mars Gradivus Gradivus was one of the gods by whom a general or soldiers might swear an oath to be valorous in battle.Livy 2.45. His temple outside the Porta Capena was where armies gathered. The archaic priesthood of Mars Gradivus was the Salii, the "leaping priests" who danced ritually in armor as a prelude to war.Livy, 1.20, , with note by Valerie M. Warrior, The History of Rome Books 1–5 (Hackett, 2006), p. 31. His cult title is most often taken to mean "the Strider" or "the Marching God," from gradus, "step, march."Compare Gradiva. The second-century grammarian Sextus Pompeius Festus offers two other explanations in addition. The name, he says, might also mean the vibration of a spear, for which the Greeks use the word kradainein; others locate the origin of Gradivus in the grass (gramine), because the Grass Crown is the highest military honor; see Carole Newlands, Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 106. Maurus Servius Honoratus says that grass was sacred to Mars (note to Aeneid 12.119). The poet Statius addresses him as "the most implacable of the gods,"Statius, Thebaid 9.4. See also 7.695. but Valerius Maximus concludes his history by invoking Mars Gradivus as "author and support of the name 'Roman'":Valerius Maximus 2.131.1, auctor ac stator Romani nominis. Gradivus is asked – along with Capitoline Jupiter and Vesta, as the keeper of Rome's perpetual flame – to "guard, preserve, and protect" the state of Rome, the peace, and the princeps (the emperor Tiberius at the time).Hans-Friedrich Mueller, Roman Religion in Valerius Maximus (Routledge, 2002), p. 88. A source from Late Antiquity says that the wife of Gradivus was Nereia, the daughter of Nereus, and that he loved her passionately.Martianus Capella, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury 1.4. Mars Quirinus ]] Mars Quirinus was the protector of the Quirites ("citizens" or "civilians") as divided into curiae (citizen assemblies), whose oaths were required to make a treaty. , p. 167. As a guarantor of treaties, Mars Quirinus is thus a god of peace: "When he rampages, Mars is called Gradivus, but when he's at peace Quirinus."Mars enim cum saevit Gradivus dicitur, cum tranquillus est Quirinus: Maurus Servius Honoratus, note to Aeneid 1.292, at Perseus. At Aeneid 6.860, Servius further notes: "Quirinus is the Mars who presides over peace and whose cult is maintained within the civilian realm, for the Mars of war has his temple outside that realm." See also Belier, Decayed Gods, p. 92: "The identification of the two gods is a reflection of a social process. The men who till the soil as Quirites in times of peace are identical with the men who defend their country as Milites in times of war." The deified Romulus was identified with Mars Quirinus. In the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, however, Mars and Quirinus were two separate deities, though not perhaps in origin. Each of the three had his own flamen (specialized priest), but the functions of the Flamen Martialis and Flamen Quirinalis are hard to distinguish.Palmer, The Archaic Community of the Romans, pp. 165–171. On how Romulus became identified with Mars Quirinus, see the Dumézilian summary of Belier, Decayed Gods, p. 93–94. Mars Grabovius Mars is invoked as Grabovius in the Iguvine Tablets, bronze tablets written in Umbrian that record ritual protocols for carrying out public ceremonies on behalf of the city and community of Iguvium. The same title is given to Jupiter and to the Umbrian deity Vofionus. This triad has been compared to the Archaic Triad, with Vofionus equivalent to Quirinus.Etymologically, Quirinus is *co-uiri-no, "(the god) of the community of men (viri)," and Vofionus is *leudhyo-no, "(the god) of the people": Oliver de Cazanove, "Pre-Roman Italy, Before and Under the Romans," in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 49. It has also been argued that Vofionus corresponds to Janus, because an entry in Sextus Pompeius Festus (204, edition of Lindsay) indicates there was a Roman triad of Jupiter, Mars, and Janus, each having quirinus as a title; C. Scott Littleton, The New Comparative Mythology (University of California Press, 1966, 1973), p. 178, citing Vsevolod Basanoff, Les dieux Romains (1942). Tables I and VI describe a complex ritual that took place at the three gates of the city. After the auspices were taken, two groups of three victims were sacrificed at each gate. Mars Grabovius received three oxen.O. de Cazanove, "Pre-Roman Italy," pp. 49–50. Mars Pater being seduced by Mars, fresco from Pompeii, 1st century AD]] "Father Mars" or "Mars the Father" is the form in which the god is invoked in the agricultural prayer of Cato,The Indo-European character of this prayer is discussed by Calvert Watkins, "Some Indo-European Prayers: Cato's Lustration of the Fields," in How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 197–213. and he appears with this title in several other literary texts and inscriptions.Celia E. Schultz, "Juno Sospita and Roman Insecurity in the Social War," in Religion in Republican Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 217, especially note 38. Mars Pater is among the several gods invoked in the ritual of devotio, by means of which a general sacrificed himself and the lives of the enemy to secure a Roman victory.For the text of this vow, see The invocation of Decius Mus. Father Mars is the regular recipient of the suovetaurilia, the sacrifice of a pig (sus), ram (ovis) and bull (taurus), or often a bull alone.Mary Beard, J.A. North, and S.R.F. Price, Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 71ff. for examples of a bull offering, p. 153 on the suovetaurilia. To Mars Pater other epithets were sometimes appended, such as Mars Pater Victor ("Father Mars the Victorious"),Beard et al., "Religions of Rome'', p. 370. to whom the Roman army sacrificed a bull on March 1.Martin Henig, Religion in Roman Britain (London, 1984, 1995), p. 27, citing the military calendar from Dura-Europos. Although pater and mater were fairly common as honorifics for a deity,Gary Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press, 2005), p. 168. any special claim for Mars as father of the Roman people lies in the mythic genealogy that makes him the divine father of Romulus and Remus.Newlands, Playing with Time, p. 104. Mars Silvanus In the section of his farming book that offers recipes and medical preparations, Cato describes a votum to promote the health of cattle: Make an offering to Mars Silvanus in the forest (in silva) during the daytime for each head of cattle: 3 pounds of meal, 4½ pounds of bacon, 4½ pounds of meat, and 3 pints of wine. You may place the viands in one vessel, and the wine likewise in one vessel. Either a slave or a free man may make this offering. After the ceremony is over, consume the offering on the spot at once. A woman may not take part in this offering or see how it is performed. You may vow the vow every year if you wish.Votum pro bubus, uti valeant, sic facito. Marti Silvano in silva interdius in capita singula boum votum facito. Farris L. III et lardi P.39 IIII S et pulpae P. IIII S, vini S.40 III, id in unum vas liceto coicere, et vinum item in unum vas liceto coicere. Eam rem divinam vel servus vel liber licebit faciat. Ubi res divina facta erit, statim ibidem consumito. Mulier ad eam rem divinam ne adsit neve videat quo modo fiat. Hoc votum in annos singulos, si voles, licebit vovere. Cato the Elder, On Farming 83, English translation from the Loeb Classical Library, Bill Thayer's edition at LacusCurtius. That Mars Silvanus is a single entity has been doubted. Invocations of deities are often list-like, without connecting words, and the phrase should perhaps be understood as "Mars and Silvanus".Robert Schilling, "Silvanus," in Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 146; Peter F. Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus: A Study in Roman Folk Religion (Brill, 1992), pp. 8–9, 49. Women were explicitly excluded from some cult practices of Silvanus, but not necessarily of Mars.Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus, pp. 9 and 105ff. William Warde Fowler, however, thought that the wild god of the wood Silvanus may have been "an emanation or offshoot" of Mars.William Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, 1908), p. 55. Mars Ultor on the Antonine Wall has been scanned and a video produced. ]] Augustus created the cult of "Mars the Avenger" to mark two occasions: his defeat of the assassins of Caesar at Philippi in 42 BC, and the negotiated return of the Roman battle standards that had been lost to the Parthians at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC. The god is depicted wearing a cuirass and helmet and standing in a "martial pose," leaning on a lance he holds in his right hand. He holds a shield in his left hand.Michael Lipka, Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach (Brill, 2009), p. 91. The goddess Ultio, a divine personification of vengeance, had an altar and golden statue in his temple.Clark, Divine Qualities, pp. 23–24. The Temple of Mars Ultor, dedicated in 2 BC in the center of the Forum of Augustus, gave the god a new place of honor.Robert Schilling, "Mars," Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 135; Mary Beard, J.A. North, and S.R.F. Price, Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 80. Some rituals previously conducted within the cult of Capitoline Jupiter were transferred to the new temple,For instance, during the Republic, the dictator was charged with the ritual clavi figendi causa, driving a nail into the wall of the Capitoline temple. According to Cassius Dio (55.10.4, as cited by Lipka, Roman Gods, p. 108), this duty was transferred to a censor under Augustus, and the ritual moved to the Temple of Mars Ultor. which became the point of departure for magistrates as they left for military campaigns abroad.Lipka, Roman Gods, p. 109. Augustus required the Senate to meet at the temple when deliberating questions of war and peace.Harry Sidebottom, "International Relations," in The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare: Rome from the Late Republic to the Late Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2007), vol. 2, p. 15. The temple also became the site at which sacrifice was made to conclude the rite of passage of young men assuming the toga virilis ("man's toga") around age 14.Cassius Dio 55.10.2; Nicole Belyache, "Religious Actors in Daily Life," in A Companion to Roman Religion p. 279. On various Imperial holidays, Mars Ultor was the first god to receive a sacrifice, followed by the Genius of the emperor.Lipka, Roman Gods, pp. 111–112. An inscription from the 2nd century records a vow to offer Mars Ultor a bull with gilded horns.CIL VI.1, no. 2086 (edition of Bormann and Henzen, 1876), as translated and cited by Charlotte R. Long, The Twelve Gods of Greece and Rome (Brill, 1987), pp. 130–131. Mars Augustus to Mars Augustus from Roman Gaul]] Augustus or Augusta was appended far and wide, "on monuments great and small,"Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 230. to the name of gods or goddesses, including Mars. The honorific marks the affiliation of a deity with Imperial cult.A.E. Cooley, "Beyond Rome and Latium: Roman Religion in the Age of Augustus," in Religion in Republican Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 247; Duncan Fishwick, The imperial cult in the Latin West (Brill, 2005), passim. In Hispania, many of the statues and dedications to Mars Augustus were presented by members of the priesthood or sodality called the Sodales Augustales.Jonathan Edmondson, "The Cult of Mars Augustus and Roman Imperial Power at Augusta Emerita (Lusitania) in the Third Century A.D.: A New Votive Dedication," in Culto imperial: politica y poder («L'Erma» di Bretschneider, 2007), p. 562. These include an inscription that was later built into the castle walls at Sines, Portugal; dedications at Ipagrum (Aguilar de la Frontera, in the modern province of Córdoba) and at Conobaria (Las Cabezas de San Juan in the province of Seville) in Baetica; and a statue at Isturgi (CIL II. 2121 = ILS II2/7, 56). A magister of the "Lares of Augustus" made a dedication to Mars Augustus (CIL II. 2013 = ILS II2/5, 773) at Singili(a) Barba (Cerro del Castillón, Antequera). These vows (vota) were usually fulfilled within a sanctuary of Imperial cult, or in a temple or precinct (templum) consecrated specifically to Mars.Edmondson, "The Cult of Mars Augustus," p. 563. As with other deities invoked as Augustus, altars to Mars Augustus might be set up to further the well-being (salus) of the emperor,Edmondson, "The Cult of Mars Augustus," p. 562. but some inscriptions suggest personal devotion. An inscription in the Alps records the gratitude of a slave who dedicated a statue to Mars Augustus as conservator corporis sui, the preserver of his own body, said to have been vowed ex iussu numinis ipsius, "by the order of the numen himself".ILS 3160; Rudolf Haensch, "Inscriptions as Sources of Knowledge for Religions and Cults in the Roman World of Imperial Times," in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 182. Mars Augustus appears in inscriptions at sites throughout the Empire, such as Hispania Baetica, Saguntum,William Van Andringa, "Religions and the Integration of Cities in the Empire in the Second Century AD: The Creation of a Common Religious Language," A Companion to Roman Religion, p. 86. and Emerita (Lusitania) in Roman Spain;Edmondson, "The Cult of Mars Augustus," pp. 541–575. Leptis Magna (with a date of 6–7 AD) in present-day Libya;Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 238, note 11, citing Victor Ehrenberg and Arnold H.M. Jones, Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius (Oxford University Press, 1955), no. 43. and Sarmizegetusa in the province of Dacia.The chief priest of the three Dacian provinces dedicated an altar pro salute, for the wellbeing of Gordian III, at an imperial cult center sometime between 238 and 244 AD; Edmondson, "The Cult of Mars Augustus," p. 562. Provincial epithets In addition to his cult titles at Rome, Mars appears in a large number of inscriptions in the provinces of the Roman Empire, and more rarely in literary texts, identified with a local deity by means of an epithet. Mars appears with great frequency in Gaul among the Continental Celts, as well as in Roman Spain and Britain. In Celtic settings, he is often invoked as a healer.Miranda Green, Animals in Celtic Life and Myth (Routledge, 1992), p. 198. The inscriptions indicate that Mars' ability to dispel the enemy on the battlefield was transferred to the sick person's struggle against illness; healing is expressed in terms of warding off and rescue.Ton Derks, Gods, Temples, and Ritual Practices: The Transformation of Religious Ideas and Values in Roman Gaul (Amsterdam University Press, 1998), p. 79. Celtic Mars Mars is identified with a number of Celtic deities, some of whom are not attested independently. , from the Barkway hoard, Roman Britain]] *'Mars Alator' is attested in Roman Britain by an inscription found on an altar at South Shields,RIB 1055, as cited by Bernhard Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture (Boydell & Brewer, 1997, originally published in German 1994), p. 11. and a silver-gilt votive plaque that was part of the Barkway hoard from Hertfordshire.RIB 218, as cited by Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 11. Alator has been interpreted variously as "Huntsman" or "Cherisher".Phillips, E.J. (1977). Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani, Great Britain, Volume I, Fascicule 1. Hadrian's Wall East of the North Tyne (p. 66). Oxford: Oxford University Press. .Ross, Anne (1967). Pagan Celtic Britain. Routledge & Kegan Paul. . *'Mars Albiorix' appears in an inscription from modern-day Sablet, in the province of Gallia Narbonensis.CIL 12.1300. Albiorix probably means "King of the Land" or "King of the World", with the first element related to the geographical name Albion and Middle Welsh elfydd, "world, land".Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 11. *'Mars Barrex' is attested by a single dedicatory inscription found at Carlisle, England.Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 32. Barrex or Barrecis probably means "Supreme One" (Gaulish barro-'', "head").Xavier Delamarre, ''Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise (Éditions Errance, 2003), p. 68. *'Mars Belatucadrus' is named in five inscriptions''RIB'' 918, 948, 970, 1784, 2044, as cited by Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 33. in the area of Hadrian's Wall.Miranda Alhouse-Green, "Gallo-British Deities and Their Shrines," in A Companion to Roman Britain (Blackwell, 2004), p. 215. The Celtic god Belatucadros, with various spellings, is attested independently in twenty additional inscriptions in northern England.Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 33. *'Mars Braciaca' appears in a single votive inscription at Bakewell, Derbyshire.RIB 278, as cited by Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, pp. 42–43. The Celtic epithet may refer to malt or beer, though intoxication in Greco-Roman religion is associated with Dionysus.Eric Birley, "The Deities of Roman Britain," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.18.1 (1986), pp. 43, 68; Delamarre, entry on bracis, Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise, p. 85. In discussing the Celtiberian Mars Neto, Macrobius associates Mars and Liber, a Roman deity identified with Dionysus (Saturnalia 1.19). A reference in PlinyPliny the Elder, Natural History 18.62. suggests a connection to Mars' agricultural function, with the Gaulish word bracis referring to a type of wheat; a medieval Latin gloss says it was used to make beer.In Galatian, the form of Celtic spoken by the Celts who settled in Anatolia, the word embrekton was a kind of beverage; Delamarre, Dictionnaire, p. 85. *'Mars Camulus' is found in five inscriptions scattered over a fairly wide geographical area.ILTG 351; CIL 13.3980; CIL 13.8701; CIL 13.11818; RIV 2166; Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 57. The Celtic god Camulus appears independently in one votive inscription from Rome.CIL 6.32574; Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, pp. 56–57. *'Mars Cocidius' is found in five inscriptions from northern England.RIB 602, 933, 1017, 2015, 2024; Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 75. About twenty dedications in all are known for the Celtic god Cocidius, mainly made by Roman military personnel, and confined to northwest Cumbria and along Hadrian's Wall. He is once identified with Silvanus.RIB 1578. He is depicted on two votive plaques as a warrior bearing shield and spear,RIB 2007. and on an altar as a huntsman accompanied by a dog and stag.RIB 986 and 987; Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 75. *'Mars Condatis' occurs in three inscriptions from Roman Britain.RIB 731 (Bowes), 1024 (Piercebridge), and 1045 (Chester-le-Street); Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 80. The cult title is probably related to the place name Condate, often used in Gaul for settlements at the confluence of rivers.Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 80. The Celtic god Condatis is thought to have functions pertaining to water and healing.Jones, Barri & Mattingly, David (1990). An Atlas of Roman Britain (p. 275). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. . *'Mars Corotiacus' is an equestrian Mars attested only on a votive from Martlesham in Suffolk.RIB 213; Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 82. A bronze statuette depicts him as a cavalryman, armed and riding a horse which tramples a prostrate enemy beneath its hooves.Miranda J. Green. "Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend" (p. 142.) Thames and Hudson Ltd. 1997 *'Mars Lenus', or more often Lenus Mars, had a major healing cult at the capital of the Treveri (present-day Trier). Among the votives are images of children offering doves.Green, Animals in Celtic Life and Myth, p. 216. His consort Ancamna is also found with the Celtic god Smertrios. *'Mars Loucetius'. The Celtic god Loucetios, Latinized as ''-ius'', appears in nine inscriptions in present-day Germany and France and one in Britain, and in three as Leucetius. The Gaulish and Brythonic theonyms likely derive from Proto-Celtic *louk(k)et-'', "bright, shining, flashing," hence also "lightning,"Xavier Delamarre, ''Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise (Éditions Errance, 2003), 2nd edition, p. 200. alluding to either a Celtic commonplace metaphor between battles and thunderstorms (Old Irish torannchless, the "thunder feat"), or the aura of a divinized hero (the lúan of Cú Chulainn). The name is given as an epithet of Mars. The consort of Mars Loucetius is Nemetona, whose name may be understood as pertaining either to "sacred privilege" or to the sacred grove (nemeton),Gaulish nemeton was originally a sacred grove or space defined for religious purposes, and later a building: Bernhard Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture (Boydell Press, 1997, 2000, originally published 1994 in German), p. 207. and who is also identified with the goddess Victoria. At the Romano-British site in Bath, a dedication to Mars Loucetius as part of this divine couple was made by a pilgrim who had come from the continental Treveri of Gallia Belgica to seek healing.Helmut Birkham, entry on "Loucetius," in Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, edited by John Koch (ABC-Clio, 2006), p. 1192. * Mars Medocius Campesium appears on a bronze plaque at a Romano-Celtic temple at Camulodunum (modern Colchester; see Mars Camulus above). The dedication''RIB'' 191: DEO MARTI MEDOCIO CAMPESIVM ET VICTORIE ALEXANDRI PII FELICIS AVGVSTI NOSI DONVM LOSSIO VEDA DE SVO POSVIT NEPOS VEPOGENI CALEDO ("To the god of the battlefields Mars Medocius, and to the victory of Caesar Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander Pius Felix Augustus, Lossius Veda the grandson of Vepogenus Caledos, placed this offering out of his own funds"). was made between 222 and 235 AD by a self-identified Caledonian,Martin Henig, Religion in Roman Britain (Taylor & Francis, 1984, 2005), p. 61. jointly honoring Mars and the Victoria (Victory)Duncan Fishwick, "Imperial Cult in Britain," Phoenix 15.4 (1961), p. 219. of Severus Alexander. A Celto-Latin name Medocius or Medocus is known,A Saint Medocus is recorded in the early 16th century as the eponym for St. Madoes in Gowrie; Molly Miller, "Matriliny by Treaty: The Pictish Foundation-Legend," in Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 159. and a link between Mars' epithet and the Irish legendary surgeon Miodhach has been conjectured.Fishwick, "Imperial Cult in Britain," p. 219. Campesium may be an error for Campestrium, "of the Campestres", the divinities who oversaw the parade ground,John Ferguson, The Religions of the Roman Empire (Cornell University Press, 1970, 1985), p. 212. or "of the Compeses" may refer to a local place name or ethnonym.Perhaps related to Campesie Fells in Stirlingshire; Fishwick, "Imperial Cult in Britain," p. 219. *'Mars Mullo' is invoked in two Armorican inscriptions pertaining to Imperial cult.CIL 13.3148 and 3149 at Rennes; Paganism and Christianity, 100–425 C.E.: A Sourcebook, edited by Ramsay MacMullen and Eugene N. Lane (Augsburg Fortress, 1992), pp. 76–77. The name of the Celtic god Mullo, which appears in a few additional inscriptions, has been analyzed variously as "mule" and "hill, heap".CIL 13.3096 (Craon), CIL 13.3101 and 3102, at Nantes, ILTG 343–345 (Allones); Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 200. *'Mars Neton' or Neto was a Celtiberian god at Acci (modern Guadix). According to Macrobius, he wore a radiant crown like a sun god, because the passion to act with valor was a kind of heat. He may be connected to Irish Neit.Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.19; David Rankin, Celts and the Classical World (Routledge, 1987), p. 260. *'Mars Nodens' has a possible connection to the Irish mythological figure Nuada Airgetlám. The Celtic god Nodens was also interpreted as equivalent to several other Roman gods, including Mercury and Neptune. The name may have meant "catcher", hence a fisher or hunter.Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture, p. 209. *'Mars Ocelus' had an altar dedicated by a junior army officer at Caerwent, and possibly a temple. He may be a local counterpart to Lenus.John Wacher, The Towns of Roman Britain (University of California Press, 1974), p. 384. *'Mars Olloudius' was depicted in a relief from Roman Britain without armor, in the guise of a Genius carrying a double cornucopia and holding a libation bowl (patera). Olloudius is found also at Ollioules in southern Gaul.Green, Symbol and Image in Celtic Religious Art, p. 115. *'Mars Rigisamus' is found in two inscriptions, the earliest most likely the one at Avaricum (present-day Bourges, France) in the territory of the Bituriges.CIL 1190 = ILS 4581; E. Birley, "Deities of Roman Britain," p. 48. At the site of a villa at West Coker, Somerset, he received a bronze plaque votum.Anthony Birley, The People of Roman Britain (University of California Press, 1979), p. 141. The Gaulish element rig-'' (very common at the end of names as ''-rix), found in later Celtic languages as rí, is cognate with Latin rex, "king" or more precisely "ruler". Rigisamos is "supreme ruler" or "king of kings".Delamarre, entry on rix, Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise, pp. 260–261; Green, Symbol and Image in Celtic Religious Art, p. 113. *'Mars Rigonemetis' ("King of the Sacred Grove"). A dedication to Rigonemetis and the numen (spirit) of the Emperor inscribed on a stone was discovered at Nettleham (Lincolnshire) in 1961. Rigonemetis is only known from this site, and it seems he may have been a god belonging to the tribe of the Corieltauvi. *'Mars Segomo'. "Mars the Victorious" appears among the Celtic Sequani.Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins, Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome (Facts on File, 1994, 2004), p. 297. * Mars Smertrius. At a site within the territory of the Treveri, Ancamna was the consort of Mars Smertrius.Miranda Green, Celtic Myths (University of Texas Press, 1993, 1998), p. 42. *'Mars Teutates'. A fusion of Mars with the Celtic god Teutates (Toutatis). *'Mars Thincsus'. A form of Mars invoked at Housesteads Roman Fort at Hadrian's Wall, where his name is linked with two goddesses called the Alaisiagae. Anne Ross associated Thincsus with a sculpture, also from the fort, which shows a god flanked by goddesses and accompanied by a goose – a frequent companion of war gods. *'Mars Visucius'. A fusion of Mars with the Celtic god Visucius. *'Mars Vorocius'. A Celtic healer-god invoked at the curative spring shrine at Vichy (Allier) as a curer of eye afflictions. On images, the god is depicted as a Celtic warrior. "Mars Balearicus" "Mars Balearicus" is a name used in modern scholarship for small bronze warrior figures from Majorca (one of the Balearic Islands) that are interpreted as representing the local Mars cult.G. Llompart, "Mars Balearicus," Boletín del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueología 26 (1960) 101–128; "Estatuillas de bronce de Mallorca: Mars Balearicus," in Bronces y religión romana: actas del XI Congreso Internacional de Bronces Antiguos, Madrid, mayo-junio, 1990 (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1993), p. 57ff. These statuettes have been found within talayotic sanctuaries with extensive evidence of burnt offerings. "Mars" is fashioned as a lean, athletic nude lifting a lance and wearing a helmet, often conical; the genitals are perhaps semi-erect in some examples. Other bronzes at the sites represent the heads or horns of bulls, but the bones in the ash layers indicate that sheep, goats, and pigs were the sacrificial victims. Bronze horse-hooves were found in one sanctuary. Another site held an imported statue of Imhotep, the legendary Egyptian physician. These sacred precincts were still in active use when the Roman occupation began in 123 BC. They seem to have been astronomically oriented toward the rising or setting of the constellation Centaurus.Jaume García Rosselló, Joan Fornés Bisquerra, and Michael Hoskin, "Orientations of the Talayotic Sanctuaries of Mallorca," Journal of History of Astronomy, Archaeoastronomy Supplement 31 (2000), pp. 58–64 (especially note 10) pdf. See also * Cariocecus, an Iberian war god syncretised with Mars * Mars, the planet * Nergal, the Babylonian god associated with the planet Mars in astral theology * Týr, the Norse god of war References External links * *c. 700 images of Mars at the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database Category:Deities in the Aeneid Category:Roman gods Category:War gods Category:Mythological rapists Category:Tutelary deities Category:Agricultural gods Category:Animal gods Category:Ares Category:She-wolf (Roman mythology)